Grandmasters Week 5 - Featured Match Results & Decklists

The 2020 edition of the Hearthstone Grandmasters went into its fifth week this weekend. 48 of the best players in the world began the eight week event with a total of $500,000 and a ticket to the World Championship on the line. The action featured a drastically overhauled format which saw players start with Swiss Rounds previously and are now divided into groups and completing Round Robin stages.

This weekend saw the tried and true format of 4 Deck Conquest with 1 Ban. The way it works is that both players bring 4 decks, and both players ban 1 deck of their opponent. They then choose to play a deck of the remaining decks and every time they win with a deck it gets eliminated. Once either players wins with 3 decks, they win the match.

Video Recaps

Since we are posting our article close to the ending of Day 3, not all of the matches have been put onto YouTube yet, so check the official Hearthstone Esports YT Channel for the uploads later here!

Road to Playoffs

The Grandmasters started with 3 weeks of Swiss, where everyone scored points. Those points lead to players being divided into Groups A and Groups B. In every Region those Groups will fight in a Round Robin style over the next 4 weeks before the Playoffs and Relegation matches will be played. Who gets to go to the Playoffs and Relegations will be decided as shown in the graphic below.

Decklists & Recap

Americas

In the first game between Gallon and Justsaiyan an early Satyr Overseer mistake cascaded the game into an early loss for Justsaiyan with his DH against Gallon's Warlock. The next match was a DH mirror match where the roles were somewhat reversed, Gallon couldn't answer early aggression and lost fairly swiftly. In the next game, between Gallon on DH and Justsaiyan on Rogue, things went beyond a SMOrc start by either player and there was a little back and forth, even though Saiyan was on the backfoot for most of it. Gallon was the victor there in the end and this left him 1 game away from taking the series.

In the next game Just Saiyan had the perfect Scrap Imp start with his Zoolock deck, against Gallon's Highlander Rogue and there were a lot of interesting back and forth trades and board states to consider for both players. In the end however, Zoolock is not meant to go toe to toe with Rogue in a drawn out battle. It's built to win the board early and power through, which Just Saiyan didn't quite get to do, which cost him the game, and the series to Gallon 3-1.

Europe

Pavel and Kolento fought out our featured match in the European Region. It started with a Face Hunter mirror match, which obviously didn't last very long. Pavel took that one before he moved on to his Rogue deck while Kolento moved to his Demon Hunter deck for the second match up, instead of staying on his Hunter. Pavel needed all his guile in that match up, creating a desperate 6/10 Kronx Dragonhoof in hopes of staving off lethal from Kolento. This ended up a brilliant plan, because Kolento had no other means than to try and take 12 face damage as he took out the Kronx and put Pavel at lethal again for next turn. This put Kolento himself down to 4 health as well however which gave Pavel the opportunity to finish him.

With Kolento in a deep 2-0 hole Pavel needed just 1 win to take the series, but Kolento wasn't having any of it and tried to fight back with his Rogue deck against Pavel on Demon Hunter. Some Hanar secret shenanigans allowed Kolento to build up a small board, and a big 10/10 Edwin to follow it made Pavel concede, since he had neither the cards nor the health to deal with it. With Pavel still needing only 1 win for the series it was on to a mirror match on Demon Hunter between the two. First Pavel had to use his face to keep up with Kolento's board and then got stuck with 2x Priestess of Fury sandwiching a Skull of Gul'dan as his only cards. Suffice to say that Kolento took this game as well.

Finally then it was the decider game, between Pavel on Demon Hunter and Kolento on Face Hunter. It turned into a game of calculating paths to lethal for both players, where unfortunately for Kolento, Pavel managed to hang on with 7 health while producing lethal, making Pavel take the series 3-2.

Asia-Pacific

SamuelTsao and tom60229 squared off in our Asia Pacific featured match, with the first game with Tom on Rogue and Samuel on Demon Hunter. Even though Samuel had a good hand to start the game, Tom had an equally good hand and got the early advantage that his opponent never managed to wrestle away again. The second game then was a mirror match on Demon Hunter, where Tom's inclusion of Frozen Shadoweaver turned out to be very clutch as it thwarted Samuel's plans twice for a convincing win for Tom. This left Tom 1 win away from a series win, having to get that final win with his Spell Druid.

SamuelTsao's quest to get the reverse sweep started with Zoolock and it was a good choice, because Tom could not handle the pressure Samuel put out and he had a disastrous Mountseller turn on top of it to finish any chance he had. The next class Samuel brought was the Demon Hunter, which is very much favored in it's match up against Spell Druid. Samuel got off to a lightning start, but he couldn't quite finish the deal, allowing tom60229 to set up a board with some lucky Mountseller taunts, which allowed him to live the crucial one more turn he needed to set up a huge board, which he buffed with Power of the Wild and Savage Roar for the finish of the game and the series, 3-1. Sadly for SamuelTsao the reverse sweep didn't happen.

90+% DH, warrior, and still lots of rogue. The rest - hunter and warlock. All games are kinda repetative, barely any differences in decks amongst dozens of players. There were a few priests and druids, and that's 5th week in a row now?